ery; that you will be pleased to countenance the
restoration of liberty to these unhappy men, who alone in this land
of freedom are degraded into perpetual bondage, and who, amidst
the general joy of surrounding freemen, are groaning in servile
subjection; that you will devise means for removing this
inconsistency from the character of the American people; that you
will promote mercy and justice towards this distressed race; and
that you will step to the very verge of the power vested in you for
discouraging every species of traffic in the persons of our
fellow-men."

The words were probably Franklin's own, and, as he died a few weeks
after they were written, they may be considered as his dying words to
his countrymen,--counsel wise and merciful as his always was.

A memorable debate followed the presentation of these memorials. Even in
the imperfect report of it that has come down to us, the "shameful
indecency" of which Madison speaks is visible enough. Franklin,
venerable in years, exalted in character, and eminent above almost all
the men of the time for services to his country, was sneered at for
senility and denounced as disregarding the obligations of the
Constitution. But the wrath of the pro-slavery extremists was specially
aroused against the Society of Friends, and was unrestrained by any
considerations of either decency or truth. In this respect the debate
was the precursor of every contest in Congress upon the subject that was
to follow for the coming seventy years. The Quakers were the
representative abolitionists of that day, and the measure of bitter and
angry denunciation that was meted out to them was the same measure
which, heaped up and overflowing, was poured out upon those who, in
later times, took upon themselves the burden of the cause of the slave.
The line of argument, the appeals to prejudice, the disregard of facts
and the false conclusions, the misrepresentation of past history and the
misapprehension of the future, the contempt of reason, of common sense,
and common humanity, then laboriously and unscrupulously arrayed in
defense of slavery, left nothing for the exercise of the ingenuity of
modern orators. A single difference only between the earlier and the
later time is conspicuous; the "plantation manners," as they were called
five and twenty years ago, which the Wises, the Brookses, the
Barksdales, and the Priors of the modern South relied u